Class versus climate? Transformation conflicts in the automotive industry

ABSTRACT

Major ecological threats such as climate change affect everyone, but do not level out social inequalities. The neglect of class in ecological politics means that measures against global warming often encounter social barriers and the social-ecological transformation becomes conflict-ridden. Based on in-depth empirical research at two German car manufacturers, the article shows how management and labour in a carbon industry deal with the transformation. With the help of concepts from class theory, the car plants analysed are described as class societies in miniature. They constitute social fields in which the transformation changes the rules of the game by which the company actors act. Company interest groups and trade union structures, as well as external veto players (climate movements, the far right) have a significant impact on conflict dynamics. In each case, it can be seen that institutionally contained class conflicts in co-determined companies are increasingly turning into social-ecological transformation conflicts. These are multi-level conflicts in which ownership-based decision-making power plays a central role. No ecological class is emerging beyond production. Instead, a transformation corporatism is asserting itself, which is coming up against class-specific limits in the decision-making monopoly over business models.

KEYWORDS:

• Workers
• ownership
• industrial conflict
• climate crisis
• social-ecological transformation

1. Introduction: climate change and the forgetting of class

He is a “motorhead” and takes great pleasure in tuning his car to “over 220 km/h” in order to chase Teslas on the motorway until they “have to pull over with an overheating engine.” With these words, a worker begins the interview on the transformation of the Opel plant in Eisenach. The trade unionist makes it clear that he will not let anyone take his hobby away from him.¹ He adds:

About Fridays for Future, we always say, jokingly: “They shouldn’t glue themselves to the street in front of us. Wouldn’t be so good for them. Oops. Foot slipped off the clutch. Sorry!” (Opel worker, KMK)

Whenever we cite this example in our public presentations, the audience reacts with horror. But where does the aggressive rejection of climate protests, as articulated “jokingly” by the worker interviewed, come from? Any attempt at an answer leads to the heart of conflicts in which the class to which our Opel worker belongs plays a special role. On the one hand, production workers are at the “eye of the storm” of the social-ecological transformation, while on the other hand, their working conditions, interests and lifestyles are barely present in the opinion-forming public sphere.

The mainstream of ecological awareness unintentionally reinforces this problem. Its fundamental error is rooted in the assumption that mere knowledge of major ecological dangers is sufficient to move societies to insight and conversion. Sociological expertise has certainly contributed to such harmonistic misdiagnoses. “Poverty is hierarchic, smog is democratic,” Ulrich Beck (1992, 36) once argued in his paradigmatic Risk Society. His expectation that the logic of class-specific distribution struggles in rich societies would be increasingly overshadowed by the “universality” of major global ecological hazards (ibid., p. 23) has not materialized, however. It is true that dangers such as climate change affect everyone, but they in no way level out class differences. On the contrary, in societies in which the “democratic class struggle” (Korpi 1983) is publicly marginalized, resistance is triggered that can act as a huge brake on ecological sustainability goals. Accordingly, the “question of how seriously individuals perceive the danger posed by the climate crisis” has become a “central ideological dividing line in this society” (Riehl 2023, 4).

Even the social sciences can no longer ignore this potential for conflict. In an endeavour to correct today’s widespread “class cluelessness” (Williams 2017, 4), two diametrically opposed positions are emerging in sociological debates. At one pole, there are interpretations which assume that the social-ecological conflict merely expands the terrain of traditional class conflicts (Foster et al. 2010). The struggle to limit global warming is interpreted as a “class war” with a “focus on production” (Huber 2022, 3). The counter-thesis at the other pole is that an ecological class can only form “against production” (Latour and Schultz 2022, 83), because anyone who wants to preserve the “conditions of habitability of the planet” (ibid., p. 26) must consistently break with the old productivism and its main classes. However, neither position does justice to the interests and lifestyles embodied by our Opel worker.

According to the first of three theses argued here, transformation conflicts in the world of work can only be adequately analysed if the main axes of this conflict, the ecological and the class axis, are considered in their respective independence. In companies and workplaces, these axes of conflict enter into a tense synthesis, whereby the conflict dynamics – this is our second thesis – are determined by the interests of the owners. Ownership-based decision-making power over products, production processes and their material composition conflicts with the interests of employees who want to retain acquired social property and preserve their status. Whether transformation conflicts are more conservative or more transformative depends largely on works councils and trade unions in co-determined companies. In these arenas – according to our third thesis – a transformation corporatism is likely to develop, which will only have a lasting effect if workforces begin to take responsibility for what they produce.

In what follows, we examine these theses using large companies from the automotive industry, a sector that is under particular pressure to change due to binding decarbonization targets. In the first step, we shed light on the main axes of social-ecological transformation conflicts and introduce our own class model that can be applied to the corporate world of work (section 2). This is followed by in-depth empirical research that sheds light on the tension between social and ecological objectives, which is omnipresent in the two car plants examined (3, 4). Finally, we return to the initial question of the relationship between the social question and the social-ecological conflict and situate our findings within the current sociological debate on transformation (5).

2. Heuristic framework: class, climate, conflict

In order to be able to analyse transformation conflicts in the world of work, we focus primarily on two axes of conflict: the class axis and the axis of social-ecological conflict. Both are linked in the concept of the economic-ecological pincer crisis (Dörre et al. 2022). The concept of the pincer crisis states that the most important means of pacifying social conflicts in capitalisms regulated by the welfare state – the generation of economic growth – has an increasingly destructive ecological effect under status quo conditions and is therefore destructive to society. In this context, the status quo refers to high emissions, resource-intensive production and lifestyles and steadily increasing energy consumption based on fossil fuels. Modern capitalist societies are therefore caught between Scylla and Charybdis: if there is no economic growth, social hardship increases; if growth increases, major ecological dangers escalate, above all climate change. According to the Emissions GAP Report, the planet could heat up by an average of around 2.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century (United Nations Environment Programme 2023) – a scenario in which up to a third of humanity would lose their traditional climate zones and thus their livelihoods (Lenton et al. 2023). The 1.5-degree scenario of the Paris Climate Conference in 2015 already seems out of reach (IPCC 2023). At the same time, many regions of the world are also experiencing stagnation or even regression when it comes to social sustainability goals such as overcoming poverty, eradicating hunger and combating social inequality (United Nations 2023). The fact that the time available for fundamental changes of direction is shrinking adds to the drama. This epochal crisis constellation creates the problematic raw material that drives transformation conflicts (Dörre 2019).

2.1. The class axis of transformation

What Ulrich Beck failed to recognize and many of the ecologically aware still ignore: even comparatively rich, secure states such as the Federal Republic of Germany are still class societies. According to Dahrendorf, class refers to “interest groups emerging from certain structural conditions which operate as such and effect structure changes” (Dahrendorf 1959, ix). To this day, these interest groups are engaged in a struggle for the socially generated surplus product, a struggle which is currently picking up speed again due to inflation and real or anticipated welfare cuts. However, class theories interpret distribution struggles in a particular way. They operate with assumptions of causality that link the “good fortune of the strong” with “the misery of the weak” (Boltanski, Chiapello, and Elliot 2005, 360).

Erik Olin Wright (2015, 12) distinguishes three clusters of class-relevant causal mechanisms, to each of which specific key processes can be assigned. At the micro level of individual lifestyles, people acquire class-relevant characteristics (individual attributes). Behind these attributes, distinction acts as a social mechanism that includes people in class positions and at the same time excludes them from other positions. Approaches that operate with Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of field and capital are located in this cluster. At the meso level, positions and opportunities within market relations can be analysed, which are related to each other through social closure, positive or negative privilege (opportunity hoarding). This is the level of Weberian assumptions of causality. Opportunity hoarding occurs, for example, when barriers are created that restrict the supply of attractive middle-class jobs and exclude the majority of the labour force from such activities. On a macro-social level, it is ultimately about positioning within relations of domination and exploitation as well as the associated conflicts, especially in production (ibid., p. 13). This is the level of Marxian theory (“Marxian” instead of “Marxist”). Here, private property rights to the means of production determine class relations (ibid., p. 8). The connecting principles are domination and exploitation. Domination rests on the ability to control the labour and activities of others. Exploitation involves the generation of economic benefits from the labour activities of those who are dominated. All exploitation therefore implies some kind of domination, but not all domination entails exploitation (ibid., p. 9).²

Wright’s class theory is stimulating, and we follow it in its ownership-based, conflict-logic implications. With a view to transformation conflicts, however, we must considerably modify and expand the basic understanding of class theory so that the class divisions can be related to the conflict dynamics. Ownership-based decision-making power not only characterizes relations of exploitation and domination, it also influences the material characteristics of products and production processes. To substantiate this view, we have developed our own class model as a first step (Dörre 2023b). Our initial aim is not to prove class affiliations and their habitualisation in longitudinal studies. Rather, it is a heuristic that aims to make it possible to test assumptions about class-specific influences on conflict dynamics.

On the basis of the criteria (a) “ownership of and/or control over the means of production”, (b) the “power of control over persons” exercised in economic organizations or granted by the state and (c) the appropriated “social property” of wage earners,³ which functions as a counter-concept to capitalist property, our model differentiates between six employment classes, four of which – the self-employed and waged middle class (SMC, WMC) and the new and conventional working class (NWC, CWC) – each produce their own exclusion zones (EZ). In zones of exclusion, the employment, labour and income standards typical of the respective classes are significantly undercut due to extra-economic domination; these zones are characterized by a deficit in social property resulting from atypical employment and precarious income. On the basis of a data set (n = 19,381),⁴ which we use for a secondary analysis, the relationships between occupational classes can be calculated (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Labour force categories (n = 19381). Labour force aged 15 to 64 (Source: Own presentation based on BBiB and BAuA data).

At this point, it is impractical to describe the class model in detail, but the following is significant for transformation conflicts: strategic decisions about the business models of larger companies are made exclusively by an upper class⁵ within the ruling class (RC, 0.9 per cent) and thus by a tiny social minority. The two middle classes (31.2 per cent including exclusion zones), whose class positions include conflicting interests (Wright 1985, 47; 2015, 135; ff., 155ff.), are excluded from strategically far-reaching decisions. However, with small-scale capitalist ownership and/or bureaucratic control over fewer than 250 people, which is exercised in companies or state authorities, they have the means to enforce their interpretations of growth and sustainability in hierarchical decision-making structures.

The new working class (13.7 per cent including the excluded sector), which we construct following older debates about a “nouvelle classe ouvrière” (Mallet 1965, p. 57ff.), has neither the means of production nor the power of control. Academic or relatively high educational and corresponding professional skills, however, help this large group to class positions from which they can influence production processes, within limits. Employees without specialized knowledge, who belong to the conventional working class, do not have this opportunity. With their predominantly intermediate educational qualifications and corresponding professional skills, they reach positions from which they have at most a partial overview of work processes. They are completely excluded from production decisions. If we take a broad definition of the working class and include nurses and carers for the elderly in this category, the conventional working class, with its often standardized, routine activities, makes up the relative majority of those in employment (38.8 per cent); what is striking is the exorbitant size of the exclusion zone (17.5 per cent) in relation to the core class (21.3 per cent). The transitions to the underclass of unemployed are correspondingly fluid. Due to their social heterogeneity, those in marginal employment do not form an occupational class; however, as they are neither paid a living wage nor protected by social security, they are at the bottom of the labour hierarchy in this model.

As the sum of class-specific zones of exclusion, the class-spanning excluded sector comprises almost a third of the labour force (32.1 percent including the underclass). As not all atypical employment relationships are precarious, it is oversized in relation to the core classes that define social standards; nevertheless, our class model illustrates that insecure, vulnerable work and employment relationships have become a “normal form of organisation” (Castel 2011, 136) of social life. Nevertheless, the precariat does not amount to a social class, as Mike Savage (2015, 174) assumes, but at best is a manifestation of a socially heterogeneous sector with various forms of class-specific precarity (Wright 2015, p. 158ff.). Here, extra-economic domination legitimizes overexploitation and unequal exchange, for example by means of racist or sexist classifications (Choonara, Murgia, and Carmo 2022). The excluded have no influence on production decisions or labour processes.

The constant cost-intensive struggle for the degree of control over the expenditure and utilization of labour power, which exploiters and exploited purposefully wage (Wright 2015, 46), is predominantly fought out in contemporary capitalisms in the economic field and its economic organizations. The economic field differs from other social fields in that the sanctions here are particularly brutal and “the blatant pursuit of maximising individual material profit can be made the public goal of behaviour” (Bourdieu et al. 1998, p. 169ff.). The economic field is a historically evolved, relational structure with interlocking sub-fields (industry, company, operation, profit centre, department), each of which is characterized by specific, relatively autonomous power relationships. In the “field of companies,” the power relations and rules of the game are essentially determined by market-dominating groups. When the “black box” is opened, the field of the company appears, “which enjoys relative autonomy vis-à-vis the constraints stemming from its position in the corporate field” (ibid., p. 191). The same applies to the subfields of the company, the department and the workplace.

The key processes named by Wright that lead to class formation can be found in each subfield, including workplaces and companies. Large companies, as we analyse them, are places of social distinction, where the distribution of social opportunities is decided. They are the scene of distribution struggles and at the same time arenas in which (over)exploitation is organized and unequal exchange is enforced. The conflicts that arise and how they unfold depend on the use of the power resources that capital and labour have at their disposal in the respective field (Wright 2015 ff.;, p. 186; Schmalz and Dörre 2013). Important in this context is that conscious – trade union – class formation takes place in the arena of the large company. Class action here becomes the action of networks and formal organizations of wage earners who want to defend or improve class positions (Therborn 1987, 143).

2.2. The ecological conflict axis

How can we relate these considerations to the social-ecological conflict and the disputes surrounding climate change? Jason Moore offers a good answer, according to which the increase in the degree of exploitation of living labour corresponds in many ways to the appropriation of “cheap natures.” In his groundbreaking work Capitalism in the Web of Life (2015), which understands the capitalist social formation as a global ecosystem in the midst of a broader world ecology, Moore illustrates how this type of appropriation has, since early capitalism, contributed to the increase in labour productivity and thus to accumulation and economic growth, but also to the destruction of nature. Appropriation is therefore a causal mechanism with the help of which “nature’s work” is transformed into “the bourgeoisie’s value” (p. 71, emphasis in original; cf. Russ 2023). The use of production technology increases labour productivity by making use of “the ability of said natures” to “work for free” (ibid.). Companies and corporations organize this process of appropriation.

Like the capitalist ecosystem as a whole, the appropriation of nature goes through various phases. It should be noted that the individual’s climate footprint varies with their respective class position. Although the data on the relationship between social inequality and greenhouse gas emissions is unsatisfactory, the calculations and estimates of economist Lucas Chancel (2022) show a clear trend: in 2019, the top ten per cent of the world’s adult population was responsible for 48 per cent of total emissions, while the bottom half was only responsible for twelve per cent. In 1990, 62 per cent of global inequality in individual CO₂ emissions could still be attributed to economic inequalities between the countries in which the respective individuals lived. Almost 30 years later, the ratio has reversed: in 2019, almost two thirds (64 per cent) of global inequality in both individual climate-damaging emissions was attributable to the gap between low and high emitters within countries. In North America and Europe, the lower income half – including many members of the conventional working class – reduced their emissions burden by five to 15 per cent. These income classes thus achieve values that are close to or even reach the Paris climate targets for 2030 with an annual per capita emissions burden of around ten tonnes in the USA and around five tonnes in European countries. In contrast, the wealthiest one per cent of the world’s population emitted 26 per cent more per capita in 2019 than 30 years ago, while the richest 0.01 per cent even increased their emissions by 80 per cent. The main cause of the rising emissions burden is investment, not individual consumption patterns. In 2019, over 70 per cent of the emissions of the richest one per cent resulted from investments by private companies or governments. Parallel to the rise in inequality and the concentration of wealth, the share of investments in the per capita footprint of the capitalist elite has steadily increased since the 1990s (ibid.).

The data indicates that luxury production for the luxury consumption of the wealthiest classes has become one of the most important drivers of climate change. Nevertheless, it would be naive to assume that wage earners who insist on social justice are inevitably also the pioneers of ecological sustainability. Concerns about jobs, social status, one’s children’s future and one’s home region can have the opposite effect. This is mainly due to the stubborn dynamic that the social-ecological conflict unfolds. This dynamic must not be reduced to class struggle, nor is it identical with it. The “work of nature” is something other than wage labour. It is better understood when labour is regarded as a “life-giving process” (Foster, Clark, and York 2010, 403) that goes beyond gainful employment and includes the production of nature’s use value. It should also be emphasized that the ecological axis of conflict also divides within social classes. It separates the winners of the social-ecological transformation from the losers.

Conflicts on the nature axis are therefore self-dynamic, even though they overlap with the capital-labour axis in terms of property rights, the costs of transformation and the consequences for lifestyles. Like the class axis, the social-ecological conflict also has an impact within companies and enterprises. In these social subfields, the “work of nature” is appropriated, valorized and subjected to the private pursuit of profit. However, in earlier stages of capitalist development, the utilization and appropriation of natural resources was more the task of specialists. This is beginning to change under the conditions of the economic-ecological pincer crisis. The goal of reducing climate-damaging emissions in Germany to net zero by 2045 represents a profound turning point for all sectors of the economy, but especially for the industrial carbon industries.

Our research in the automotive industry, an industry that has so far failed to reduce CO₂ emissions, is based on the assumption that a causality can be observed there that follows three constitutive principles – comparable to Wright’s concept of exploitation (Wright 2015, 84): (a) the inverse interdependent welfare principle: the fossil fuel-based wealth of ruling classes with a large climate footprint is inversely dependent on the wealth of dominated classes that cause a low emissions burden; (b) the exclusion principle: reverse interdependence is based on the fact that dominated classes are excluded from decisions on investment and innovation; (c) the appropriation principle: exclusion gives classes with great decision-making power a material advantage because it allows them to appropriate “cheap natures” at the expense of dominated classes. To put it bluntly, this appropriation mechanism means that tiny minorities make decisions that affect the survival of all those who contribute least to climate change and who generally suffer the most from the consequences of global warming.

2.3. In-depth studies at car manufacturers – methodology and samples

Whether this is the case, how the micro-macro dynamics of transformation conflicts unfold and how it affects society can only be clarified empirically. In the following, we will concentrate on analyses of two car manufacturers. We conducted the survey at the VW Kassel component plant in Baunatal and at the Opel assembly plant in Eisenach. We conducted the sub-study according to our tried-and-tested methodology of in-depth sociological surveys (Dörre et al. 2018, p. 59ff.).⁶ Although the results of the surveys are not representative in a statistical sense, they are characterized by a high degree of plausibility. From spring 2021 to the summer months of 2023, people from all hierarchical levels of the plants surveyed were interviewed (n = 118). The spectrum ranges from plant management to middle managers and specialists to workers, trainees, temporary workers and other precarious employees. Problem-centred interviews and expert surveys, whose guidelines were tailored to company status groups, served as the survey instrument (Kaufmann 1999; Witzel 2000). All of the interviews were recorded and in some cases transcribed in full. Following the coding, the content of the material was analysed (Kelle and Kluge 2010, p. 43f.).

It should be emphasized in this context that each interviewee can be assigned to a position in the class model presented above. The classes serve as cells to be filled by means of theoretical sampling (Glaser and Strauss 1998, p. 51ff.). In both plants analysed, labour force classes operate in microcosm. In a large company such as VW Baunatal, plant management and in some cases the department heads belong to the ruling class, middle management including foremen belong to the wage-dependent middle class. Engineers and employees in administrative departments and planning offices who do not have controlling power can be categorized as the new working class. Employees who belong to the conventional working were a particular focus of our attention. The exclusion zones are mainly represented in the factories by temporary labour and by contractors, suppliers and contract workers. By definition, the underclass is not found in the companies investigated; the self-employed middle class is also only represented in the factory environment and in the supply chains. Depending on their qualifications and managerial authority, we categorized works council members as belonging either to the wage-dependent middle class or the new working class. As the Eisenach plant is significantly smaller than VW-Baunatal, controlling power pertains to smaller numbers of people; individual class affiliations can nevertheless be mapped in a comparable way.

In most cases, we conducted individual interviews and a small number of group interviews on topics such as education and career paths, the current work situation, the experience of social-ecological transformation, assessments of company interest groups and trade unions, attitudes towards climate change and climate protests as well as views of society, including self-positioning in the social structure of the Federal Republic of Germany. Following the interviews, the interviewees were presented with a standardized questionnaire which, in addition to socio-demographic data, also recorded attitudes towards society, social inequalities and transformation conflicts. Not all people completed this questionnaire; the basic populations of the standardized survey (cross-case n = 110; VW/Opel n = 65) and the qualitative data set therefore differ.

The decisive factor for the unfolding of conflicts is how the class axis and the ecological axis relate to each other in the actions of the actors. In this context, the case of Baunatal is of particular importance. We deliberately chose this plant because the works council leadership had attracted attention by openly criticizing the car manufacturer’s business model. The works council chairman at the time gave a remarkable interview:

The problem is the industry’s business model, which is designed to push 70 million cars onto the world market every year. What we need are fewer cars, smaller cars, an expansion of local public transport with demand-responsive on-demand bus and car sharing services for rural areas. (Bätzold 2021)

We gave the interviewees a paraphrase of this quote during the interview process.

Opel Eisenach is a suitable contrasting case because preliminary discussions with the works council revealed that the Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD), as an external veto player,⁷ exerts a far greater influence on parts of the workforce than is the case in Baunatal. The research methodology corresponds to “critical engagement” (Bezuidenhout, Mnwana, and von Holdt 2022), a special variant of public sociology. Knowledge gained from exclusive company access is fed back to the company stakeholders in an edited form in order to make the transformation a company issue. We presented the initial findings of the study at joint company events with management, works councils, shop stewards and at a citizens’ meeting. The critical feedback was in turn incorporated into the evaluation of the empirical material (Büchling, Dörre, and Lösche 2023).

Background conflicts of interest only become transformation conflicts once they are led by “manifest interest groups” (Dahrendorf 1959, p. 73ff.) who are aware of their concerns. Interests that are intentionally defined by pivotal individuals and strategic groups then determine the conflict dynamics. In the case of large companies with intact organized labour relations, it would make sense to deal with transformation conflicts within the framework of institutionalized co-determination and collective bargaining democracy. Management and executives then represent the power of capital, while works councils, trade unions and workforces represent the organized and institutional power of wage labour. Both sources of power are based on the primary power of wage labourers, which results from their position on the labour market and in the production process (Schmalz and Dörre 2013). However, as our empirical in-depth studies will show, the actors in organized industrial relations never act alone. Apart from the state, which is always present, at least indirectly, as a rule-setting and resource-distributing actor in the social field of a large company, industrial conflict parties in the transformation are confronted with at least two groups of external veto players who, even if they are not directly present in company arenas, influence the transformation game and its rules.

The first group of actors derives its power from efforts to give a public voice to the invisible “work of nature.”⁸ This power can come into conflict with both capital and wage labour interests. As our research shows, the concerns of these veto players are brought into the families of factory employees via children and young people. They reach employees via the media or opposition minorities in the trade union or works council. This is why the actions of Fridays for Future, the Last Generation or the climate camp activists of the Wolfsburg project house Amsel 44 (Müßgens 2023)⁹ are present in the workforces of car manufacturers, even though the protests usually take place outside the factory gates and workplaces. The second group of veto players denies the “work of nature,” refutes or relativizes climate change, longs for a bygone era before environmental concerns, replaces the pattern of interpretation of class-specific conflicts of interest with the template of ethnicised insider-outsider conflicts and polarizes politically by declaring climate movements and green formations to be the chief enemies of “normal” citizens. The most important of these counter-actors are organizations on the far right, above all the AfD. The influence of both groups of external veto players is also noticeable in the car plants analysed.

3. Car manufacturers in the transformation

VW Baunatal and Opel Eisenach are part of a sector that is still at the heart of German industry with almost 775,000 direct employees, over 460,000 of whom work for end-product manufacturers (Statistisches Bundesamt 2023). As only new cars with zero emissions will be allowed on the market within the EU from 2035, manufacturers and suppliers are in a state of upheaval, and the switch to electric battery-based drivetrains alone could cost the industry a quarter of a million jobs. Although German manufacturers temporarily recorded record sales and profits in 2022 (Ernst & Young 2023), the era of dream margins appears to be coming to an end. It is questionable whether car production can be increased without making concessions on price. Although demand for electric vehicles is growing, the market shares of German manufacturers are falling short of expectations (Automotive Thüringen 2023). In addition, most end-product manufacturers are still making significantly higher profits with combustion engines than with e-vehicles.

But as there is no way around increasing sales of electric vehicles, drastic cost-cutting programmes are imminent despite the current healthy profit situation, otherwise there is a risk of “significantly lower profitability in the long term” (Ernst & Young 2023). Despite the first profit warnings at VW, there was still no talk of job cuts at the plants analysed. In Baunatal, the workforce was expanded, at Opel Eisenach there was a permanent shortage of staff. Regardless of this, the transformation at both manufacturers has long since begun. In the following, we outline the regional significance of the two plants, describe the attitudes of managers and employees towards transformation and e-mobility and highlight the potential for conflict arising from the changes.

3.1. End-product manufacturers: survival in the transformation

The plants in Baunatal and Eisenach are industrial beacons with a structural influence on their regional environment. The Kassel region ranks fifth in the list of districts hit particularly hard by the consequences of transformation (Kühling 2023). The VW component plant employs over 16,000 people out of the almost 28,000 inhabitants of Baunatal. As of December 2018, 5,000 to 8,000 jobs were considered at risk in the course of the drivetrain transition, but the plant as such “will not die” (works council, LMK). Nevertheless, this prospect is causing local politicians to worry, as job losses at VW mean falling tax revenues. With the exception of Kassel’s booming defence industry, there are no equivalent regional employment alternatives in sight. In the expanding urban service economy, wages are significantly lower and around half of the jobs are considered precarious (Lacher 2018).

At the Baunatal plant, workers earn significantly better than in Eisenach, with shorter working hours. According to the job classification, assembly work is generally considered skilled labour. Moreover, despite the predicted job cuts, those who are regular employees at VW are largely unafraid of losing their jobs. They are relatively certain that they will find alternative employment at the plant or at least within the VW Group and see evidence of this every day: while jobs are being cut in the exhaust systems area, additional staff are needed for electric drives. A long-term employment guarantee and a fifteen-year parts guarantee for manufactured components, from which the plant benefits, contribute to the sense of security. However, there is something ambivalent about this underlying attitude. From the outside, people regard VW employees as civil servants, “even though they are workers.” This leads to many employees believing, as one works councillor put it, that “everything is taken care of” (VW works councillor, LMK).

Similar to VW Baunatal, the jobs at Opel Eisenach are also highly sought after in the region. As at VW, those who make the leap into the permanent workforce have qualified for work at the plant in company selection procedures. Although more modest than in Baunatal, pay and working conditions are comparatively good by regional standards: €3,800 gross per month, which can be earned at Opel, is extremely rare for workers in Thuringia. In a nationwide comparison of wages among end-product manufacturers, the assembly plant is at the bottom of the league. However, those who, like the lower 44 per cent of employees in the Thuringian district of Sonneberg, benefit from a twelve-euro minimum wage (Pusch and Emmler 2021), consider the Opel employees in Eisenach to be privileged. They are seen as “people who whinge despite high standards” (IGM secretary, NAK).

Unlike in Baunatal, a good 100 kilometres away, the immediate fears for the future are great in Eisenach. Although the highly profitable Stellantis Group has promised the assembly plant with its more than 1,200 employees the production of a fully electric vehicle after tough negotiations and conflicts, and the installation of the new production lines is in full swing, the worries remain: there is still a hiring freeze. Only temporary workers are allowed back into the plant for the first time since the coronavirus recession. It is uncertain whether Opel Eisenach will be able to master the challenges of the automotive transformation in the long term. When asked about the most important project for the future, a union shop steward replies: “Survival!.” There is constant uncertainty:

One issue is the product itself, which is currently changing, where we are seeing a change in the type of drivetrain, namely towards electromobility. At the same time, the CO₂ debate will give rise to new mobility providers and new mobility models that will have an impact on the plant in Eisenach. And, of course, we will also be confronted with what is currently happening politically. There is the dependence on China. And then there’s the war in Ukraine. And that naturally has a massive impact on the plant. We are noticing this with unstable production. (Opel works council member, NAK)

Some of the uncertainties mentioned apply to the entire industry and can also be found at VW Kassel. The reactions of the core workforce at both plants, the majority of whom are members of the conventional working class, are characterized by fear of loss. It is not so much unemployment, but the threat of loss of status that concerns the interviewees: “I’m afraid,” said one Opel worker, “that I won’t be able to maintain the standard of living I’ve built up with my wife!” (Opel worker, KAK). Status here means much more than good pay. It is about dignity, about recognition for a job that is physically and mentally demanding, about the opportunity to lead a good life according to one’s own expectations. There is a fear of losing the protection afforded by collective agreements, works agreements, employment guarantees, co-determination opportunities and company social benefits. What is at stake is the preservation of the very social property that gives workers their status.

For long-standing permanent employees, colleagues are also “like family:” they trust each other, share informal knowledge about production processes and thus gain some control over working and performance conditions, within limits. “Transformation,” on the other hand, is primarily a term used by “strategic groups,” which include works councils as well as managers. For employees in production, it is rarely used. For Opel employees, the term evokes the deindustrialization that took place after German reunification. In Baunatal, many associate it with former VW board member Wolfgang Bernhard, who wanted to sell off component production at the time. In addition, most of the workers at the large companies have already achieved what they can with their knowledge and skills. Because the transformation is a political decision and may threaten what makes their lives comfortable, some employees experience it as additional uncertainty or even see it as an encroachment on individual freedoms. For many, the change is happening too fast. The attitudes of the workforce towards the drivetrain transition and e-mobility are correspondingly contradictory.

3.2. Senior management: right of way for green growth

For the senior management in Kassel-Baunatal and – less enthusiastically – the plant management at Opel Eisenach, the basic strategic decisions have been made regarding the drivetrain transition. Managers at both plants, who we classify as belonging to the ruling class or the socially-adjacent waged middle class, identify transformation with digitalization and the switch to electric battery-based drives. They see ecological sustainability primarily as an economic efficiency problem. In senior management circles at VW, the focus is unreservedly on green growth. Compared to competitors such as Tesla, executives admit to “lagging behind in digitalization” (VW executive, HK). While a Tesla drives with an on-board computer and its own operating system, the VW system is based on a far more complex PC control system with numerous interfaces, which makes it highly susceptible to faults. Nevertheless, the optimism of ultimately emerging victorious from the cut-throat competition in the industry as one of the few platform manufacturers is in some cases exuberant; at the Eisenach assembly plant, confidence among managers is less pronounced, but even there they know that the production of a fully electric vehicle will ensure the survival of the plant for some time to come.

However, local top management has only limited influence on strategic corporate decisions in both these major plants. VW Kassel supplies components for all of the Group’s brands worldwide. The plant competes with external suppliers. Strategic decisions are predominantly made at the Wolfsburg headquarters. This results in a limited congruence of interests between management, works council and workforce: “It’s not the class divisions that play a role, but the plant versus the headquarters” (former VW manager, LMK). The same applies to the Eisenach assembly plant. Every commitment to a new vehicle has to be fought for within the Group in fierce competition between locations. This makes membership of the core workforce a constant “test of strength” (Boltanski, Chiapello, and Elliot 2005, p. 30f.), as the contract for a new model has to be bought with concessions on wage levels, and the corporate strategy is determined far away at the Stellantis headquarters, at Peugeot or at the Opel plant in Rüsselsheim. Managers and the works council at Eisenach are also under the impression that the hiring freeze is being imposed to make up for the overstaffing at the main plant in Rüsselsheim.

A corporate system that was described at the end of the 1990s as “tight profit management” (Dörre 2001, 686) can be found in both works to varying degrees. Irrespective of rhetorical fluctuations and a supposed move away from shareholder value (Schwab and Mallerret 2020, p. 218f.), the basic elements of this management concept, which is geared towards the interests of owners, have changed little. Both large corporations are managed according to key performance indicators (KPIs). The corporate headquarters set targets, which then become the subject of company policy negotiations. Ultimately, unit sales and earnings are the decisive control variables. Depending on the product and one’s position in the value chain, the scope for cushioning the pressure from head office varies. In both plants, management operates with productivity targets that are sometimes impossible to realize. According to a leading VW works council member, it is naïve to believe that productivity increases of five per cent can be achieved in every production facility every year. Big leaps in productivity are made with a new product in a new line, after 10 years this is “sucked dry,” “you can’t get anything out of it” (VW works council, LMK). Despite or because of unattainable productivity targets, plant management succeeds in passing on the economic pressure to individual employees: job security and good pay in exchange for constantly increasing productivity and efficiency is the credo of management – with far-reaching consequences for the workforce:

Every employee is simultaneously responsible for millions, even though they can’t do anything about it. And this psychological pressure is enormous. Plus the way we work, the intensity. It’s not like it used to be, when we’d barbecue half a pig at the weekend, that’s all gone. There’s hardly any time left where you can actually socialise. When there’s a break, everyone just sits there and sees if they can get by somehow. (former VW works council, LMK)

While the criticism of VW management by works councils and employees is still relatively restrained, it is sometimes voiced with great vehemence at the Opel plant. It is significant that it is directed not so much at the distant top management at Group headquarters, as at the managers on site:

We’ve got some of these managers in Eisenach who act as if they were the CEO himself. And exert this pressure, whatever the cost. And why do they do it? Because the cement mixer is in the office. And the chair has to be cemented in place every day. They are working on their chair, not Opel’s chair. And at the top our plant management says, faster, faster! Keep on target! But they [the local managers] are also just a number in the system. (Opel worker logistics, KAK)

The growing pressure to perform and the intensification of work are barely present in the minds of managers at both plants. However, all of those interviewed from strategic management agree that the switch to e-drives will make it possible to turn the “work of nature” into profit for the company in a new way and thus also into advantages for themselves. From the perspective of strategic management, the leading markets in China and the USA are setting the pace of a change that is considered inevitable, which determines the competitive game in the corporate field and therefore creates pressure to adapt.

3.3. Shop floor: scepticism towards e-mobility

The management vision of green growth, e-mobility and climate compatibility dominates both plants. It is not hegemonic in the sense of ideas that convince the workforce. The closer you get to the shop floor – a common everyday term for production workers – the more vehement the criticism of electrified car transport becomes. In part, the workers’ hostility towards e-mobility is driven by a belief in other technologies, in particular the hope that e-fuels and green hydrogen can make individual car transport fit for the future. However, many of the same criticisms of e-mobility can also be heard in the climate movement, not least the exploitation and destruction of nature in the procurement of lithium and cobalt. The growing demand for electricity, which is currently generated from coal and natural gas, i.e. fossil fuels, is just as much an issue as the high prices of current electric cars. This criticism is particularly harsh at the Opel plant:

I’m firmly convinced that car manufacturers will dig their own grave if they rely entirely on e-mobility. That is not the future. It won’t work. We’re seeing it right now with the energy crisis. They’ve been discussing all the time which public buildings should no longer be lit, whether we’ll freeze in winter. There’s almost not enough electricity right now. We have around 35 million vehicles on German roads – what happens when every one of them is an electric car? Everyone would plug in after work. There’d be a sudden surge and then everything would go dark and nobody would get to work. So it’s just not possible. At least not at the moment. And that won’t change any time soon. (Opel final assembly worker, KAK)

It is right to combat climate change, but without rash measures and with greater technical expertise. “For me, the combustion engine is currently one of the cleanest things there is” (Opel worker, KAK) is a common judgement among the workforce. While the works council leaders in Baunatal and – less actively – in Eisenach are in favour of sustainable transport systems with reduced car traffic, many employees on the shop floor draw a different conclusion from the criticism of the electrification of car traffic. They want to make the change more slowly and less radically.

Three basic attitudes are widespread among the workers. A minority is (a) open to product conversion and can certainly imagine the manufacture of products for a sustainable transport transition. They rely on their own skills and abilities. The expertise for new products is basically there, there are many highly qualified people, and this could be utilized. However, the prevailing attitudes among employees are aptly described as (b) technology-centred and (c) obstinate. In the former case, people believe that decarbonization can be achieved through technical innovation. Behind this lies the hope of being able to use the car in the usual way and, by and large, maintain one’s existing lifestyle. Obstinacy implies slowing down the pace of transformation, postponing the transition to electric drivetrains and continuing to rely on conventional platforms such as modern diesel engines for a transitional period. The criticism of expensive e-vehicles is also fierce because both plants recruit labour from rural regions. People who live in the countryside see their cars as a means of subsistence:

I can’t use public transport from Bad Langensalza to Eisenach. How am I supposed to do that? I’d have to take the train to Gotha and then from Gotha to Eisenach. Like this. And the bus, it rattles around all the villages – my commute would take a hundred years. (Opel worker, KAK)

The situation is similar in Baunatal. Up to 80 per cent of the plant’s employees live in rural areas, and without a car “they are lost” (VW executive, LMK). In light of this problem, the policies of the “green” government¹⁰ and the proposals from the climate movement seem out of touch with reality:

Yes, something has to be done to protect the climate, right? That’s not entirely wrong. But the climate activists are far too radical and far too focused on private transport. That will always generate a backlash against them. And if you ask me, it’s not for nothing that there are stickers everywhere above car exhausts saying “Fuck you, Greta!” (Opel representative, KAK)

It is acknowledged that climate activists want to give a voice to the “work of nature,” but they do so by ignoring the everyday lives of workers. “Nature gets protected, but who protects people?” (Opel expert Ost, KAK) is a telling question.

4. The micro-macro dynamics of large-scale transformation conflicts

The vehemence of these criticisms of climate protests points to a problem that arises in everyday work processes and which is expressed in multidimensional transformation conflicts. Inspired by Erik Olin Wright’s heuristics of class-relevant causal processes, we distinguish four levels of conflict in the large companies analysed below: At the micro level of working methods and individual lifestyles, the issue is the scope for a good life that is wrested from heteronomy. Being excluded from production decisions leads to a tendency for sustainability imperatives to become the subject of symbolic struggles for distinction. At the meso level, disputes revolve around the extent of control and the distribution of social opportunities in the transformation. Sustainability imperatives are often perceived on the shop floor in the mode of bureaucratic domination. Macrosocially, it is not just a question of mitigating exploitation and domination; the actors are struggling to make decisions about the what and the why, but also about the how of production. Beyond the factory boundaries, the tensions that arise in the course of the transformation are discharged in the political field, in the confrontation with the government and the state. All these levels of conflict are present in the two car plants and interact with each other.

4.1. Distinction: production intelligence, conformism, sense of devaluation

Let us begin with the way we work and its impact on individual behaviour. Modern industrial work reproduces what the philosopher Günter Anders once described as the separation of production and conscience: production and responsibility for the product are morally torn apart; the workplace produces “consciencelessness,” causes indifference among workers towards the goods produced and is therefore the “birthplace of the conformist” (Anders [1956] 2018, p. 321). However, the alienation from the product astutely described by Anders is never total, because there is no such thing as labour in which producers completely disengage their intellect. The tension between the exchange value and use value perspectives has always been inherent in the “twofold character” of wage labour. The concrete-utilitarian side of productive labour therefore never completely loses its identity-forming power (Schumann et al. 1982, p. 399ff.). However, the tension between the two perspectives is particularly noticeable in the production units of the large companies analysed. It is true that the productive activities undertaken by the conventional working class in both large-scale enterprises are still broken down into the smallest, constantly repetitive steps and squeezed into a corset of tight time constraints. But even with relatively simple assembly tasks, it is impossible to switch off completely and lose oneself in pure routine.

Over the decades, production work at the VW plant has become much more demanding. It is no longer about the individual machine. Plant operators have to “keep an eye on the entire production process,” quality assurance and tool changes make up the “largest proportion of activities” (VW foreman, LMK). At first glance, there is not much evidence of the “end of the division of labour” which the sociologists of work Horst Kern and Michael Schumann (1984) claimed to witness in the 1980s. Work is carried out in teams with elected spokespersons, but there are none of the semi-autonomous groups with large scopes of work that featured at the recently closed Volvo plant in Uddevalla. Instead, activities at interlinked stations with greatly simplified activities are common. Fully automated stations with 27-second cycles coexist with manual workstations where tasks are repeated every 30 seconds. However, the complex machine parks prove to be susceptible to faults, and minor technical problems are rectified by the teams themselves. The interruptions have no direct impact on downstream stations because “there are small buffers” (VW foreman, LMK). The teams work according to the rotation principle. However, being able to carry out all of the activities in the workshop involves a set of demands that are difficult to fulfil: “I have some stations where I can’t manage the cycle time. It just doesn’t work because it feels like you’re too stupid.” (VW transmission production worker, KAK) A three-shift system that demands maximum flexibility from workers contributes to the disruption of routines. Normally, work is done five days a week in three different shifts. The constant shift changes are even more stressful than the routinized work. For many workers, the constant availability for production is seen as lost time: “Working twelve days in a row, working three shifts, even working public holidays” has a “negative impact on private life, on the family.” The comparatively good earnings are “compensation for pain and suffering” (VW team spokesperson, KAK).

The situation at Opel can be described in a similar way, although the working conditions are much more restrictive. Since the plant was commissioned, the workplace organization has conformed to the model of “lean production” as propagated at the beginning of the 1990s (Womack, Jones, and Ross 1991). The teams have appointed team leaders and, in assembly, the cycle times are 152 seconds. However, the activities and stations are more closely linked than in the Baunatal plant. If errors or quality defects arise, the assembly line must be stopped. With the exception of areas such as the fully automated paint shop, some of the technology is not state of the art. At some stations, the assembly workers have to crawl under the assembly platform to carry out their tasks. The pace of work is determined even more directly by the conveyor belt than in the component plant, and the workers perceive this as a loss of control: “I have the feeling that the work is getting more and more each day, that the speed is getting faster and faster.” (Opel worker, KAK) The stressful working day with the hidden battle over production line speed is only interrupted by two nine-minute breaks and a 23-minute lunch break. “One hour before the lunch break, you’re exhausted,” is how one interviewee described his working day (Opel final assembly worker, KAK).

External control of the labour process feeds the feeling of belonging to a devalued status group as a worker, whose achievements and interests barely receive any public attention (cf. L. Beck and Westheuser 2022). “I’ve been a worker all my life […], these are just terms [workers, labour force – author’s note] where you can quickly feel degraded.” (VW worker, KAK) It is a fact that “workers are hardly recognised, definitely!” (Opel worker, KAK) Constant appeals to production intelligence and sustainability imperatives on the one hand, and exclusion from production decisions, heteronomy and a sense of devaluation on the other, create a tension that cannot be resolved in assembly-line work. This is why work constraints imposed from above are internalized. Once you have passed the factory gate, your non-working time begins and with it your real life. You don’t want to be deprived of the freedom to decide for yourself how and for what you want to use this limited time.

This is the reason why the Opel worker quoted above considers the “green government” and the climate movement to be the main opponents. Like him, many workers accept the constraints of working life in order to be “truly free after work” (Opel worker, KAK). They do not want to be told how to live under any circumstances. And certainly not by people with privileged class status who “know nothing about working on the assembly line” yet feel morally superior. The criticism of so-called “climate gluers” (Klimakleber) is particularly harsh:

Glueing yourself to the street, that’s such an outrageous cheek, if you ask me, because who are you targeting? You’re targeting the ordinary man who just has to keep his goddamn appointments, who has to go to work, who just wants to pick up his kids from school, who is completely dependent on driving to do that. That’s who you’re hurting. Not those who are causing the problem: this economic system, which is currently just built around: “We need more, more, more, more new things, more, more, more, more, more.” (Opel worker, KAK)

The criticism of climate protests, that they target not the “system” but the “common man,” also results from the fact that civil disobedience, as practised by the Last Generation, upsets the arrangements that make an externally controlled life worth living to some degree. People are forced to submit to a regime of “ever more and never enough!,” which is responsible for climate change. In the perception of workers, however, the climate protests primarily affect those for whom the rigours of production work are already very demanding, which is why the daily pressure they experience can turn into aggressive reactions. Conflicts over transformation become struggles for distinction in which the legitimacy of lifestyles is contested.

Of course, the fact that symbolic conflicts trigger fantasies of violence in extreme cases may be criticized as a defiant reaction to a doomed “petro-masculinity” (Daggett 2018). However, such negative classifications take a highly one-sided approach to the struggles for distinction, as they ignore the fact that those excluded from production decisions are simultaneously defending the meaning of their work, the social property they have acquired and thus their social status with its lifeworld freedoms. In their rejection of “climate gluers,” workers and high-ranking managers establish a common ground that transcends class boundaries and is based on a shared image of the enemy. “No war, no climate gluers” (VW manager, HK) is the characteristic wish for the future of one manager interviewed. Conflict issues that arise in the work process and are shut down in the large company field are symbolically resolved in this way. What divides the world of production is brought back together in imagined unity by the opposition to rule-breaking climate protests.

4.2. Hoarding opportunities: ecology in control mode

Struggles for distinction, which are waged in opposition to an external opponent, influence conflicts that are waged within the company over social opportunities. At the meso level, bureaucratic controlling power uses positive or negative privileges to decide which interpretations of the social-ecological conflict prevail. Managers in middle positions have to implement guidelines themselves, but they are also in a position to present their own ideas of ecologically acceptable working methods to their subordinates as a binding standard.

Something else has to be added: middle managers and employees who belong to the new working class were and are partly professionally involved with material flows, material procurement, product and process planning. Their activities are indirectly controlled via budgets and often carried out in project form. Unlike the conventional working class, highly qualified wage earners influence not only labour processes but also, to a certain extent, production processes. Driving green growth can even become a career springboard. This motivates people to tackle the social-ecological transformation on their own. For example, the foundry area of the VW plant is in the process of preparing the production and use of green hydrogen in order to make the plant emission-free. Initial attempts at a circular economy (“closed loop”) are already being practised. Aluminium shavings produced during mechanical processing are recovered and recycled to produce new metal housings. Those responsible buy defective aluminium bicycles, signs, scrap metal and beer kegs, have them melted down and thus reduce material costs. At the Opel plant, a resourceful expert has ensured that that from 2025, 90 per cent of the plant’s electricity will come from renewable sources. Much of this is being done without any guidelines “from above.”

Production workers, on the other hand, are largely denied access to the more attractive positions of the in-house middle class or the new working class. For this reason, any kind of double standard, as is believed to be the case in privileged positions, is duly noted in the production areas. Managers are perceived to be able to afford an ecologically sustainable lifestyle. It is noticeable that some managers openly sympathize with the concerns of climate movements. On the shop floor, such positions are criticized when they are linked to goals that are administered and enforced in a mode of bureaucratic control in the course of the drivetrain transition. This is also about the distribution of social opportunities. Supervisors who, on the one hand, could imagine working as organic farmers in their next job, but on the other hand have several cars in their garage to indulge their hobby, find it relatively easy to be in favour of “green growth.” Those who have to pay a high price for the drivetrain transition in terms of shift work, intensification of performance and devaluation of their own lifestyle will find it much more difficult to adapt to the requirements of the transformation.

However, competition for social opportunities in the factories is rarely conducted as a collective struggle; it predominantly takes the form of individualizing tests of endurance. For example, people have to qualify for new tasks and areas of work through further training in order to maintain their acquired status. The social self-positioning of employees is revealing in this context. When confronted with symbols relating to the image of society (pyramid, hourglass, onion), the majority of interviewees at both plants chose the pyramid, while the hourglass was chosen with an emphasis on a shrinking social centre and the expectation of increasing polarization in society, which also reflects the fear of a loss of prosperity. Some of the trade union activists describe the social order as a class society. However, most respondents see themselves in the social centre. In Baunatal, workers often classify themselves in the upper middle; in Eisenach, this is reserved for employees with office jobs (LAK, LMK). Those working on the shop floor tend to see themselves as belonging to the lower middle class.

The self-positioning of workers in the social middle has been documented in numerous studies (Evans and Tilley 2017; Williams 2017). For Savage, this reveals a moral consciousness that critically questions class conceit: people want to avoid the impression that they are judging others on the basis of their social position, which is why they assure themselves of a “normality” that is acceptable to the majority by assigning themselves to the centre of society (Savage 2015, 374). This may be true, but these self-positionings correspond to real class experiences among the workers in the plants analysed. All of the workers interviewed are socially close to the exclusion zone of temporary work, which is used strategically in both plants. Measured against the standards of the core workforce, this area is characterized by negative privileges. If the personnel budgets are exhausted, temporary workers are hired, who can be booked as material costs, and because of the uncertainty of the employment relationship, temporary work means “more pressure:”

You realise now that you’re a temporary worker. For example, if you’re sick as a temp, you’ll think twice about staying at home, because first of all you’ll lose out financially, because you’ll only get your basic salary. (Opel agency worker, KAK)

For insecure employees, temporary work thus becomes an ongoing test of their ability to qualify for the permanent workforce. Although the works councils of both factories are fighting for the temporary workers to be taken on, or at least for better working conditions, the precarious workers are generally assigned the least attractive tasks and the least wanted shifts. They carry out their work under significantly worse conditions than the permanent employees. The latter are constantly reminded that their tasks can also be performed under far less favourable conditions. This explains why the negative privileges of temporary work are constantly reproduced in the company hierarchy.

I’ve had shop stewards’ meetings and also works meetings where existing temporary workers stand up and explain to other temps that they shouldn’t kick up such a fuss, that they themselves have also had it hard and had to get through it. (former VW works council, LMK)

Temporary work stands for an exclusion zone in social proximity to the conventional working class, which, although limited in number in both plants, ensures that permanent workers locate themselves in class positions that positively privilege them over the precarious outside. In the view of the permanent employees, it is not they themselves who are exploited, but those who embody the social bottom in the factory. The image of a dichotomous society divided into top and bottom is still present among many workers. Unlike in the classic consciousness studies of West German industrial sociology (Popitz et al. 1957), however, this is not linked to a collective hope for advancement. Rather, it seems as if the desire for singularity, which the sociology of labour of the interwar period attributed to white-collar workers (Kracauer and Hoare [1929] 1998), has taken hold of parts of the conventional working class. To put it more precisely: the striving for individual distinctiveness is experienced as an imposed norm that one is rarely able to fulfil in one’s job. “Being normal,” on the other hand, is a commitment that allows people to attack the constant appeals to uniqueness and self-marketability from a supposed majority perspective. Self-positioning oneself in the social centre, which deviates from one’s objective class position, is subjectively useful for avoiding devaluation by others. This leads to a competition for social opportunities that has an individualizing effect and is now being played out on new terrain as a result of the mobility transition and the energy transformation.

4.3. Decision-making power: “it only works with force”

While cultural distinction conceals structural class differences and the hoarding of opportunities goes hand in hand with individualization and social closure in middle positions, transformation conflicts at the macro level (exploitation, domination) are shaped by collective logics of action. The trade union countervailing power system (Roßmann 2023) acts as a corrective in both plants, providing the transition from latent, symbolically dominated to manifest interest groups in the wage labour sector. Collective actions and interest policies ensure a noticeable upgrading of productive labour. At the VW plant, the works council is able to partially break up the exclusion of the workforce from product and production decisions. The decisive factors are a unionization rate of well over 90 percent and a union shop steward body with up to 600 members. The works council and trade union exert their influence via the “Kassel approach.” This is the nameplate for a strategic cooperation with management, which ensured that the course was set in favour of e-drives at a time when there was still no talk of this within the Group:

In 2006, the decision was made in connection with [the] Kassel approach: “We’re going to start early and make the first prototypes of electric motors.” Which seemed absurd at the time. And then there was an application from the site to build up expertise in the field of electric drives. That was the beginning of this production. And it has now developed to such an extent that Kassel is now the transmission control centre. (VW works council, LMK)

This approach was de facto institutionalized in the Kassel approach. “The Kassel house,” as the company policy approach is also known, is based on the incorporation of organized wage labour power. It legitimizes the claim of the works council, trade union and workforce to exert influence on corporate strategy, “namely on the question of which products the plant is now promoting” (ibid.). This experience, that a strongly developed co-determination system makes the plant particularly innovative, is to be applied to the transformation process in future. In addition to economic efficiency and job security, ecological sustainability and with it the “work of nature” are added as a third pillar. What exactly is meant by sustainability becomes a subject of conflict in company negotiations, and the Kassel approach is no mere consensus event: conflicts and even industrial disputes are considered legitimate. The former works council chairman goes one step further. Management can only be persuaded “by force.” In this context, force means the mobilization of trade union organizational power and the ability to engage in conflict over contentious issues, as the experienced works council member explains the basis of the Kassel approach:

You can show management the power you have if you have a degree of organisation greater than 90 percent. You have strong co-determination rights in personnel issues, in the authorisation of overtime, etc. Then everyone can think carefully: do we want to work well together or do we want a crisis on the shop floor every time there’s a minor discussion and get into arguments every time? Every time! And all these are the advantages of this location, relatively rapid staff redeployment, relatively forward-looking working time models, the chance of a review, but not an ironclad rejection of overtime. In other words, the things that make this location successful and thus also make the management successful. So, is that what you want to keep? Then you’ll have to live with us discussing the conflicts. Or do you want force things through? Then we’ll do that too. (former VW works council, LMK)

In academic terms, this form of antagonistic co-operation can be described more precisely than with the concept of force, namely as “democratic class struggle.” Trade union organizational power expands into institutionally vested power. In Baunatal, the parties to the conflict operate in a constellation that can be modelled in terms of game theory, in which the organizational power and conflict resolution capacity of the workforce are strong enough to create a high degree of corporatist order between labour and capital, but without being so strong that they threaten fundamental capitalist property rights (Wright 2015, 221). This compromise equilibrium makes it possible to shape conflicts in a transformative way. The class struggle occasionally approaches a “democratic process of decision-making” (Dahrendorf 1959, 245). However, it remains important that the works council and trade union develop their own, clearly recognizable profile. While the management sticks to a business model that makes profits mainly from financial services and the high-priced luxury saloon and SUV market, the works council leadership and the IG Metall union’s parliamentary group are pushing for a sustainable change in mobility that includes a reduction in individual car traffic:

The argument that an electric car ultimately consumes less energy than a combustion engine is true, because the primary energy input is significantly lower, by a third. But when it comes to the impact on the climate: how much CO₂ do I produce before it has even driven the first kilometre? You already have 20 tonnes of CO₂. And if I then have to drive 100,000 kilometres before it pays off in climate terms, then I ask myself, what kind of nonsense is that? (VW works council, LMK)

Works councillors who argue in this way are not elected in Baunatal because of, but rather (at least by parts of the workforce) despite their position on the mobility transition with over 90 per cent of the votes of all union members. Expertise and personal credibility are what count most for the plant’s workforce, and this is not fundamentally different at the Eisenach plant. Nevertheless, the differences compared to VW Kassel are considerable: the level of union organization is below 70 percent, and the management’s guiding principle has long been the value-generating society, in which there are no conflicts of interest. The works council is extremely competent and recognized by the workforce, but it is difficult to find active support for committee and union work. In addition, the far right probably has considerably more influence as a silent veto player at Opel than at the Baunatal plant, although the differences are decreasing.¹¹ The works council chairman therefore warns against overburdening the workforce and urges “taking people with us in the transformation debate” (Opel works council chairman, LMK). In view of the balance of power within the plant, transformation conflicts can follow a conservative dynamic.

A day of action to protest against a feared plant closure at least indicates that union mobilization is possible. “Separated in the brand, united in IG Metall,” reads the inscription on a banner, hinting at cross-site solidarity. This day of action, in which employees from Peugeot’s main plant in Sochaux, eastern France, also took part (Beaud and Pialoux 1999), has left a deep impression on the interviewees’ minds. Mobilizations such as this day of action are exceptional and, according to trade union activists, are unlikely to be repeated. The majority of employees therefore tend to deputize their politics to representatives. In any case, there can be no talk of a relative balance of power in Eisenach as there is in Baunatal, not least because there are hardly any opportunities to influence the location decisions of the Peugeot-Stellantis management. In view of overcapacities and the mobility transformation, the French management is pursuing “a policy of wear and tear” that “first drives up profits:” it means “only investing what they absolutely need, because they know that in the end they have alternatives and can also relocate production elsewhere with little investment” (Opel works council member, NAK).

In terms of game theory, the plant finds itself in the “liberal-democratic trap” (Wright 2015, p. 222f.), which resembles a prisoner’s dilemma: The works council and workforce can effectively defend themselves against management interests, but the strategically skilled management of the Group is also able to oppose the organized labour interests highly effectively. In order to resolve the conflict, the corporate side operates with the silent threat of relocating investments elsewhere and thus provoking economic decline – a prospect that puts the works council on the defensive. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to deal with transformation issues proactively. However, trade union activists’ experiences of this also lead to demands for a radical democratization of corporate decision-making power:

I believe that there is too little co-determination in the companies. What kind of products are invested in? How do they work? How many people are employed and under what conditions? We have an incredible amount of catching up to do. Because on the one hand, of course, the workforce says: “Works council, that’s what you’re there for. On the other hand, I don’t have the tools to seriously negotiate with the employers that I need in order to deal with grievances. (Opel works council member, NAK)

In such thinking, there are flashes of a class consciousness that puts in question the property rights of the owners of the means of production by demanding a comprehensive democratization of production decisions. However, this is the position of an active trade union minority whose influence usually ends at the factory or company gates.

4.4. Government and state: “incredible rage!”

Despite all the criticism levelled at management, employees rarely question company authority. Double standards, perceived among state-political elites, are attacked much more vehemently. The “green government” makes driving a car “just so expensive that normal people can no longer afford it. And then we come back to injustice. As a mere worker, I’m not allowed to enjoy my hobby. And the one who has the millions in his bank account buys a Porsche anyway” (Opel worker, KAK), argues our Opel worker quoted at the beginning, thereby aptly identifying the class dimension of transformation conflicts. In the political arena, however, it is not capital but the state that is the target of criticism. Rather than being directed against management, discontent and dissatisfaction – fuelled, not least by workplace experiences – are targeted primarily at those in political power. In the eyes of many employees, the entire political class seems far removed from the problems of “normal” everyday people. Climate policy measures such as the draft law on building and heating renovation are simply seen as unrealistic:

People have an enormous amount of anger. They see their houses disappearing because they can no longer afford them. They see the inflation, they see the rent. They also realise that there’s a war going on, that billions are being pumped into it. Nobody talks about it! So the political elite, the political class, doesn’t question anything at all and we have to bleed for it. And the second point is: how can I defend myself against this? The left has failed, it has destroyed itself. And then people say, AfD, if that’s what the political elite is most upset about, then I’ll vote AfD. (VW executive, LMK)

Rebellion against climate policies that prioritize ecological sustainability to the exclusion of social justice is a gateway for the far right’s pseudo-rebellious “business as usual.” Hardly anyone at the VW plant or at Opel Eisenach would dare to openly declare their support for a far-right party, but voices in favour of equal treatment for this party are nevertheless heard in the interviews:

To be honest, the AfD is a democratically elected party too. But in politics, you’re seen as the good guy if you’re on the left and the bad guy if you’re on the right. To some extent that applies to the trade unions too. They have to be neutral, but they’re not. (Opel worker, KAK)

This is the attitude of a silent but influential minority in both factories, which is campaigning for equal treatment of the AfD and the party-political neutrality of the trade unions. The majority of the workforce, the works councils and trade union confidants are firmly opposed to the far right and its organization. “An AfD-free zone” is a significant wish expressed by a shop steward interviewed at Opel Eisenach (KAK). For many trade union activists, anti-fascism is part of their political DNA. This self-image and the backing of strong works councils encourages some to go on the offensive against right-wing colleagues:

There are a lot of people who vote AfD out of protest. So I always do my favourite line: “Hm (questioning), you’re voting AfD?,” “Yes.” “So, what do you think of me? Do you think I’m sh[…]? Do you think I’m nice or what?” “Yes, I think you’re nice. I like you.” “Well, I think it’s a shame that you’re voting AfD.” “Why?” “Well, I’m a lesbian, I’m in a relationship with a woman, and what does the AfD want? They’re against homosexuals. They want women to stand at the cooker again and preferably have ten children and a mother’s iron cross. So you’re against me. So you don’t like me. So you don’t think I’m cool at all.” And then people think about it. I’ve already managed to convince a few of them to vote for Die Partei (laughs).¹²(Opel employee, NAK)

Significantly, the debate takes place here on a personal level: the protagonist avoids facts, figures and data and refrains from questioning the wider worldview of her right-wing opponents. In doing so, she is clearly successful. However, courageous behaviour in the workplace is not able to neutralize the deeper conflict that is escalating in society and politics. The “democratic class struggle” is largely limited to the field of the company. Other forces are at work beyond this. The more the political field is shaped by the confrontation between green movements on the one hand and the apparent rebellion of a far right on the other, the more likely it is that this polarization will have an impact on transformation conflicts in workplaces and companies.

5. Transformation corporatism and its limits

This brings us to the centre of gravity of transformation conflicts in the world of work. While the example of the Tesla-chasing Opel worker mentioned at the beginning of this article regularly triggers astonishment, even outrage, when we present our findings, our references to the most important driver of climate change are often met with a shrug of the shoulders. Business decisions that entail structural “non-sustainability” (Blühdorn 2018) are made solely by the owners and strategically capable management – as in the case of car companies. Thus the top managers interviewed consider it a great achievement for German car manufacturers to maintain a leading position in the luxury market, since this “secures income and jobs” (expert, executive staff, HK). Even if our Opel worker wanted to, he could not make the slightest difference to such decisions in the short term. Like the members of dominated classes as a whole, they are excluded from production decisions and their material implications. Those who are responsible for business models benefit from the exclusion of workers. Sociological expertise that ignores such connections misses – even if unintentionally – the core of transformation conflicts.

Latour and Schultz, the authors of the memorandum On the Emergence of an Ecological Class (2022), offer illustrative lessons in this respect. Their argument unintentionally reinforces what has long characterized financialised, market- and customer-centred capitalism – the invisibilisation of production and production labour. The “ecological class,” according to the argument, wants to “diminish the role of relations of production,” while “others want to strengthen it” (ibid., p. 18; emphasis in original). This supposed alternative excludes what ecologically sensitive trade union activists, together with external veto players from the climate movements, are calling for, namely a radical democratization of property-based decision-making power in large companies. The tabooing of property rights and the trivialization of distribution struggles results in an insoluble problem of ecological class formation. The addressees of the memorandum, among whom the authors primarily include scientists, then “activists, protesters,” but also “industrialists, investors” or simply all “people of good will” (ibid., p. 55), are so socially heterogeneous that the formation of such a class in opposition to production seems highly unlikely. Good will may connect the VW manager arguing in favour of green growth with climate activists fighting for product conversion, but such commonalities are not enough for membership of an ecological class that would overcome the system. The tacit expectation that the pressure of catastrophe will bring together what divides in terms of property rights and production relations is also likely to prove deceptive. Victims of natural disasters and epidemics are fighting for survival; they do not form a viable class. The six million climate refugees that already exist in the USA are an example of this. Their flight reinforces existing social divisions. The rich are drawn to more pleasant climates, while the poorest have no prospects of starting a new, dignified life (Bittle 2023). If an ecological class were to succeed despite such adversities, its protagonists would not have the decision-making power that is absolutely necessary to tie production back to social goals; moreover, radical anti-productivism closes off the possibility of mobilizing the production intelligence of dominated classes for social-ecological restructuring.

With this in mind, we believe that interpretations based on property rights and production relations are more realistic. However, a “class war,” as Huber (2022, 1) expects, especially with regard to the USA, will hardly occur in the organized labour relations of continental European societies. In any case, “fossil fuel-powered industrialisation” has not produced a “proletarian ecology” (ibid., p. 285) in Germany. Instead, we see evidence of a transformation corporatism that integrates ecological sustainability goals as a new field of conflict. In sectors and companies where wage labour power is still comparatively strong, transformation conflicts are fought out according to democratic rules. The institutionalized class struggle can, as shown by the example of the Kassel approach, unite actors with antagonistic interests, provided that there is an approximate balance of power between the conflicting parties. Only in such constellations is the “social democratic utopia” (Wright 2015, p. 221f.) of a fair balance of interests attractive to the forces of capital. And only then is there a chance of successfully making far-reaching transformation goals the subject of internal company negotiations.

However, it must be added that the car plants examined are only islands in the midst of a disorganized working world. In Germany, the level of trade union organization has fallen to around ten percent of the dependent workforce and collective bargaining coverage is declining. Despite fierce labour disputes, union power is not sufficient to conclude collective agreements that compensate for inflation-related price increases. The empirical evidence of company- and enterprise-centred transformation corporatism therefore reaches its limits. In the plants analysed, comparatively strong works councils are unable to achieve complete equality for temporary workers. Even more problematic is the situation of small and medium-sized suppliers without strategic expertise and with comparatively powerless representation. In this sector, job losses are already in full swing: the level of employment in the supplier sector has fallen to the “lowest level since 1997” (Statistisches Bundesamt 2023) and the decline of the industry is largely taking place in secret (Sittel et al. 2022). Again, there is more evidence of successful reinterpretation of top-bottom disputes as internal-external conflicts than an open class war. In areas where class antagonisms are only weakly developed, the experience of devaluation that connects people across cultural differences and gender boundaries goes unheard. These feelings then look for another outlet, making it more likely that conspiracy-theory interpretations of transformation conflicts will find their addressees. Veto players who brand the fight against climate change as a project of control by globalist elites and call for an end to the “climate fuss” (Höcke cited in Klaus 2023) are gaining influence. Small-scale protests can solidify into substantive convictions, which then feed back from the political arena into internal corporate transformation conflicts.

This mechanism of action suggests cultural divisions that overlap class differences. In one popular science interpretation, the minority of “anywheres” (alternatively: cosmopolitans) and the majority of “somewheres” (alternatively: communitarians) are hostile to each other. While the former, who are well-educated, globalization-savvy, cosmopolitan and ecologically minded, are pushing for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, the latter, who are locally bound, at best moderately educated and critical of globalization and migration, suffer under the hegemony of a cosmopolitan minority (Goodhart 2017; for a far more nuanced view, see; de Wilde et al. 2019). However, the fact that ecological awareness is strongly pronounced in all classes and also on the shop floor speaks against culturalist interpretations of transformation conflicts. Of the respondents at Opel Eisenach and VW Baunatal who completed the standardized questionnaire, 77 percent fully or somewhat agree with the statement “Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time,” with only around twelve percent rejecting it. The statement “I am willing to pay more for a sustainable lifestyle” was agreed with by a good 58 per cent of respondents. In line with a critical view of society, 64 per cent of respondents in both surveys somewhat or fully agreed with the assessment “The current economic system is not viable in the long term,” while only two per cent disagreed. Trade union activists are certainly overrepresented in our sample, and the social desirability of answers must be taken into account. Nevertheless, the attitudes surveyed testify to a critical awareness of the environment and society, as is similarly demonstrated by larger surveys (e.g. Decker et al. 2022).

The data indicates that the workforces of the car manufacturers analysed are by no means communities that are primarily divided by a cultural cleavage. Gender equality and cultural diversity are an integral part of company interest politics in both plants. In Baunatal, the “democratic class struggle” unites employees with more than 40 different migrant backgrounds, while at Opel, temporary work is driving the internationalization of the workforce: of 270 newly hired temporary workers, well over 200 are migrants. The trade union countervailing power structure at the plants is multinational, and sensitivity to social injustice and discrimination, but also to the social-ecological conflict, is particularly pronounced among interviewees whom we categorize as belonging to the new working class. Like members of the waged middle classes, however, they tend to interpret the major social problems as transcending class. With regard to the works examined, we can emphasize even more strongly what we have already noted in previous studies: trade unions and works councils are the civil society organizations that still influence a workforce caught up in struggles for devaluation (Dörre et al. 2018). Obviously, it depends to a large extent on the attitude of works councils and trade union activists whether perceptions of conflict prevail in the workforce which are also grist to the mill of the far right, or whether the opposite is the case (Kiess, Schmidt, and Bose 2022, 318).

Regardless of every cultural difference, the exclusion of production decisions remains an important commonality that connects the various interest groups in the workforce. The conflicts grouped around this are not represented in the political system of demobilized class societies. Property issues are largely taboo in this field; only the distribution of social property becomes the subject of public controversy. This is another reason why the image of a fragmented social order, in which different conflict arenas exist side by side in a relatively unconnected manner (Mau, Lux, and Westheuser 2023), is closer to reality than the idea of a culturally polarized society. Of course, the micro-macro dynamics of transformation conflicts prove to be unpredictable.¹³ Class-specific disputes over co-determination rights, earnings and working conditions do not change the fact that tough disintegration struggles are waged below this level. What could serve as a “trigger point” (ibid., p. 244f.) for the considerable emotional tensions and political polarization depends on opportunity structures and situational circumstances.

6. Conclusion

Our case studies show that conflicts over employment, wages and working conditions, which are traditionally located on the class axis, are directly linked to the ecological axis of conflict in a new way in the wake of the automotive industry’s drivetrain transition and decarbonization. The old industrial class conflict becomes a conflict over social-ecological transformation. Without considering the social-ecological conflict, the social (class) question can no longer be adequately addressed, and vice versa. This finding is also valid for other sectors, as our in-depth research outside the automotive industry shows (Dörre et al. 2022a, 2022b). While the disputes in the lignite mining region of Lusatia (Köster et al. 2022) clearly follow a conservative dynamic and the conflicts in public transport (Liebig and Lucht 2022) tend to drive the transformation forward, climate corporatism in the automotive industry is a hybrid constellation with a relatively open outcome.

Across all cases, it becomes clear that the struggle for property-based decision-making power forms the centre of these conflicts. Blindness to an impending apocalypse, as expressed in conservative conflict dynamics, is rooted in expansive capitalist ownership and is instilled in everyday labour processes. Workforces that are excluded from production decisions can hardly take responsibility for what is produced. If you want to change this, you have to take on class (factions) that benefit from the exclusion of large majorities and tackle what critical works councils, trade union activists and parts of the climate movements are calling for – the radical democratization of property-based decision-making power. Transformative coflict dynamics, however, would have to be based on the potential refusal of workers to manufacture products that have irresponsible effects in the first place (Anders 1982, 383). Workforce ownership and control by employees, as proposed for the EU by Slovenian Labour Minister Luka Mesec (2023), would promote such decision-making capacity.¹⁴

In the workplaces analysed, such far-reaching proposals only meet with the approval of small minorities. Nevertheless, there are intersections between the class axis and social-ecological conflict that can be mobilized; they can be found in pleas for meaningful, democratically constituted work and a sustainably producing industry (Urban 2023). “Democracy time” (Benner and Engelhardt 2023), one hour every week for the discussion of relevant transformation issues during working hours, would be an important first step towards collective responsibility. An ecological welfare state that demands that those who are responsible for the largest climate footprint must pay for the transformation costs in proportion to their share of the emissions burden could prove to be a project with political majority support. The times of uninhibited free market radicalism are also over for the managers we interviewed. Almost unanimously, they call for a state capable of intervention that is not limited to repairing markets but also offers security in the transformation process. There are overlaps here with voices from works councils and trade union organizations that call for a forward-looking industrial policy, financed by the democratic redistribution of social wealth and a rapid rejection of instruments such as the debt brake (Büchling, Dörre, and Lösche 2023). In unconventional alliances, such concerns could politically unite interest groups whose unification in a shared ecological class is impossible.

In order to make such things at least a subject of discussion, the ecologically aware would be well advised to change their classification systems. They must treat our restless Opel workers with understanding and appreciation if a productive exchange of ideas is to be possible at all. They must recognize that ecological sustainability is not possible without social justice. Regardless of the feasibility of our recommendations, it remains the case that we can only be truly free if we “also take responsibility for what we produce” (Anders 1982, 369). Only when no one is able to benefit from production decisions from which the majority are excluded can the “work of nature” be given the social status that corresponds to its use value.

Additional material online

Additional information is available in the online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11609-023-00514-z).

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Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Notes on contributors

Klaus Dörre

Klaus Dörre born 1957, Professor of Labour, Industrial and Economic Sociology at the Institute for Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Main areas of research: Analyses of capitalism, transformation conflicts, selected publications: Rethinking Socialism: Compass for a sustainability revolution, Edward Elgar, 2024; (ed. with K. Lucht & F. Deppe) Sozialismus im 21. Jahrhundert? Sozialismus-Debatten 1, 2023.

Steffen Liebig

Steffen Liebig born 1985, research associate at the SFB 294 “Structural Change of Property” at the Institute for Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Main research interests: Labour and economic sociology, social-ecological transformation research, capitalism theory and conflict sociology Selected publications: Wandel der Arbeitszeiten. Von der Transformation der Arbeitszeitordnung zu transformativer Arbeitszeitpolitik, in: M. Seeliger (eds.), Strukturwandel der Arbeitsgesellschaft, 2023; (with K. Lucht) ‘Sozial-ökologische Bündnisse als Antwort auf Transformationskonflikte? Die Kampagne von ver.di und Fridays for Future im ÖPNV’, in: PROKLA, 2023.

Kim Lucht

Kim Lucht born 1994, research associate at the SFB 294 “Structural Change of Property” at the Institute for Sociology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Main research interests: Sociology of labour, social-ecological transformation, class and gender relations. Selected publications: (with L. Schubert, L. Reichardt, S. Bose & G. Hartmann) Klassen- und Geschlechterverhältnisse, in: J. Graf, K. Lucht & J. Lütten (eds.), Die Wiederkehr der Klassen, 2022.

Johanna Sittel

Johanna Sittel born 1988, Research associate in the research project “BeaT - Vocational Education and Training Renewed for the Automotive Transformation (BMWK)” at the Institute for Sociology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Main research interests: Labour and economic sociology, international precarity and informality research, social-ecological transformation, Latin America. Selected publications: Aus Buenos Aires in die Welt. Die Bedeutung informeller Arbeit in der argentinischen Automobilindustrie, 2022.

Notes

1. The paper was originally published in Berliner Journal für Soziologie, volume 34, issue 1, (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11609-023-00514-z). under the title Klasse gegen Klima? Transformationskonflikte in der Autoindustrie. Translated by Adrian Wilding.

2. According to Wright’s (2015, 84) game-theoretical concept, exploitation can be said to exist if three criteria are met: (a) the material well-being of the exploiters depends causally on the reduction of the material well-being of the exploited (inverse interdependent welfare principle); (b) the well-being of exploiters and exploited is based on the exclusion of the latter from productive resources (exclusion principle); (c) this exclusion gives the exploiters a material advantage because it enables them to appropriate the labour of the exploited (appropriation principle).

3. Social property is a form of ownership that enables wage earners to acquire professional skills, social rights, collective bargaining standards and opportunities for co-determination that were previously linked exclusively to private property: the chance to plan their lives for the longer term (Castel 2005; cf. also, p. 41; Dörre 2023a).

4. We use a representative telephone survey of the labour force conducted every six years by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) and the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA). Around 20,000 people aged 16 and over who work regular hours of at least 10 hours per week were surveyed (most recently in 2018). Topics include respondents’ employment situation, assessments of the workplace, professional qualifications and health (see https://www.bibb.de/de/2815.php). In order to be able to model the lower class and capture the labour force as fully as possible, we added the “poor unemployed” and the “only marginally employed” with less than 10 hours of work per week to the original data set. As the data set was not originally tailored to our class model, we had to refer to occupations for the allocation criteria. Differences compared to earlier modelling (Dörre 2023b) result from modified allocation criteria (see Table 1 in the online appendix). The research assistants Oskar Butting and Nora Fülöp were involved in the modelling.

5. “Classes can be identical with strata, they can unite several strata within them, and their structure can cut right through the hierarchy of stratification.” (Dahrendorf 1959, 140)

6. The surveys were carried out as part of the DFG sub-project “Property, inequality and class formation in social-ecological transformation conflicts” under the auspices of the SFB 294 project “Structural Change of Property.” The study at Opel was supported by the BMBF project BeaT as well as by student research, and the qualitative data set of the ongoing sub-project now comprises well over 300 interviewees. Investigations were also conducted into transformation conflicts in the lignite mining region of Lusatia, at the logistics group Deutsche Post/DHL, in local public transport, using the example of food bank users in the underclass and in the automotive and supplier industry. The research in Baunatal was supported by Nicole Gonzalez (Syracuse University).

7. We use the term veto players in a different way than is usual in political science. We are referring to actors who influence the transformation dynamics in companies and organizations in a conservative or a transformative way, even though they operate outside these social fields.

8. We refer to this form of power as metabolic power, which arises from the position of interest groups in the web of life and is based on the special positioning of interest groups in the reproduction of natural conditions. Structural metabolic power arises, for example, from the ability to scandalize economic interventions in natural conditions through symbolic actions and civil disobedience. Organized metabolic power arises from the ability to join together in social movements (Fridays for Future, Ende Gelände), interest groups (BUND, NABU) or non-governmental organizations (Greenpeace) that act on the axis of social-ecological conflict. Green parties also embody a variant of organized metabolic power. Political-institutional power metabolism is constituted on the nature axis by legal regulations as well as by state formalizations of nature-based interests (Federal Environment Agency, environmental authorities). Like capital and labour, the bearers of metabolic power also need access to the public sphere in order to be able to have a discursive effect. The socially reproduced “work of nature” constitutes situations and interests that would remain unnoticed in the political sphere without a public voice.

9. We documented the climate camp activities in Wolfsburg as part of a student research project.

10. The Green Party is only one member of a coalition whose other members are the SPD and FDP (Translator’s Note).

11. In the state elections in Hesse in October 2023, the AfD made above-average gains among economically dissatisfied and working-class voters: in the constituencies of Kassel Land I and II it outdid the state-wide figure of 18.4 per cent.

12. Die Partei (“The Party”) is a satirical party that pokes fun at the political mainstream and particularly the far-right (Translator’s Note).

13. Many of our interviewees consider society to be polarized for various reasons. Instructive on the polarization thesis is (Herold et al. 2023).

14. Mesec refers favourably to the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in the USA. There are already 7,000 companies there with around 30 million employees in which the workforce has taken control. In the EU, up to 600,000 companies are unable to find a new owner every year, and such a model could also work here.